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THE HON MELINDA
PAVEY MP
MINISTER FOR ROADS,
MARITIME AND FREIGHT
A government has a
responsibility to provide
services and infrastructure
that help to improve the lives
of the people it governs. It must also decide how to fund
those services and infrastructure projects.
Governments with finite resources must look to other
sources of investment, most notably the private sector.
When it comes to funding motorways, governments
across the world look to the private sector.
Partnering with the private sector frees up government
money, allowing it to deliver other vitally important
infrastructure – such as new schools, hospitals or police
stations – sooner than otherwise possible. In fact, if
governments did not work with the private sector, many
important public infrastructure projects would be
delayed years or, in some cases, never built.
Private sector funded motorways provide a faster and
safer journey. Without privately funded roads,
WestConnex, NorthConnex and other major road projects
wouldn’t have been delivered, and motorists would be
sitting in kilometres-long queues of traffic.
Toll roads ease traffic congestion and reduce the lost
productivity cost to the economy that clogged roads cause.
People can get to their jobs more quickly, perhaps grabbing
an extra 30 minutes with their family before going to work.
Not everyone wants to pay a toll; for those motorists,
there are alternative toll-free routes available. And those
free routes are less congested because other motorists
are using the tollways, which also get trucks off local
roads. Motorists will ultimately make a decision for what’s
best for them based on whether they believe they are
getting value for money.
By partnering with the private sector to build new roads,
we have freed up resources to spend on other projects that
make life in Sydney and NSW easier and a little bit better.
JODI MCKAY MP
SHADOW MINISTER
FOR TRANSPORT,
SHADOW MINISTER
FOR ROADS, MARITIME
AND FREIGHT
Tolls can play a role in
funding our roads but what
I object to is the current government’s
secretive and unfair policy in setting them.
Motorists are facing a triple whammy: new tolls on old
roads, toll increases well above the rate of inflation, and
tolls right out until the 2060s.
For example, motorists travelling the seven kilometres
from Parramatta to Homebush are paying for a road that
they have already paid for. Likewise, the 22km stretch of
the M5; the Government surprised us all when it admitted
it wants to extend the toll well beyond 2026 when it will
have been paid for. This is not user-pays. This is users
paying and paying and paying.
On top of this, tolls have been set to rise more than
inflation. A school leaver getting their P-plates today pays
$4.56 one way on the M4. By the time they leave the
workforce, and assuming a regular commute along the
motorway, they will have paid over a quarter of a million
dollars in tolls.
New toll roads are creeping up on us, too. Aside from
the bombshell of the M5, we learned that the Sydney
Gateway – the road that will take traffic to Sydney Airport
– is no longer part of the WestConnex and, as such, it will
be tolled separately. WestConnex is now just a toll road to
another toll road.
Labor accepts tolls are a necessary fact of life but
treating motorists like mobile ATMs is an insult. Labor has
a policy of having the Independent Pricing and
Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) approve all future tolling
contracts as being in the public interest; tolls not rising
above inflation; and a toll-free period on new roads.
Our policy would go some way to restoring people’s
faith in the fairness of a user-pays system.
Credits:GettyImages
NEWS
We ask the Minister for Roads and Shadow Minister about the
best way to fund essential motorway infrastructure
How do we pay for motorways?
OPEN ROAD
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23/10/17 7:01 pm